Most of county backcountry could disappear by 2020

San Diego County's rural backcountry will all but disappear in
20 years unless area leaders adopt so-called smart-growth
practices, a regional planning agency warns.

The San Diego Association of Governments says there are 636,000
acres of buildable land left in the 2.7 million-acre county, and 98
percent of the 636,000 acres will be lost if existing development
patterns continue.

"If we continue like this, we are going to run out of land," Sam
Abed, the economic development chairman for the Escondido Chamber
of Commerce, told business leaders last week in a meeting on how to
grow smarter.

The problem is not only the sheer pace of growth -- 900,000 new
residents are anticipated during the next two decades -- but the
rate at which land is being devoured by houses, highways, schools
and shopping malls.

SANDAG regional planner Paul Kavanaugh said that between 1980
and 1995, the population of San Diego County cities grew by 42
percent while the size of the urban landscape grew by 60 percent,
with stucco homes further edging out the coastal sage scrub.

It is a problem all across the United States: Farmland, forests
and fields are being paved over faster than the population is
growing. Land is being consumed at much higher rates in
fast-growing Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix.

In Atlanta, which is often touted as the poster child for dumb
growth, the ground is being chewed up three times as fast as the
growth rate, said Michael Pawlukiewicz, the environmental land-use
director for the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.

"In Chattanooga (Tenn.), they say you don't need to go to
Atlanta; Atlanta will come to you," Pawlukiewicz said.

Perhaps more so than Atlanta and other cities, which are
sprawling into expanses of flat territory, the problem of
unbalanced land consumption is particularly critical in San Diego
County because of the rapidly dwindling inventory of available
dirt.

About half the county is national forest, parkland, military
land, endangered species territory, or simply too steep to build
on. The other half could be blanketed with urban- and
suburban-style development by 2020 -- and existing zoning laws seem
to encourage that. Smart growth would redirect new housing to
existing urban areas.

Change is advocated

If the rules don't change, newcomers could chew up still more
territory than those who just arrived. Typical neighborhoods have
5.5 houses to the acre, while plans for remaining empty land in the
county's 18 cities allow for 2.4 units per acre, according to a
SANDAG report.

"In other words, our current plans call for future residents to
live at a density less than half of what we live in today," the
report states.

SANDAG planners suggest that if there is any hope of preventing
the full-scale paving of the backcountry all the way to the
Imperial County line, local officials are going to have to make the
tough political decisions to change those plans.

That will take more than just adjusting a few numbers, said
Michael Beck, the San Diego-area director for the Endangered
Habitats League.

"The biggest and most dangerous myth is that we can just tweak
the existing system and produce smart growth," Beck said.

Escondido Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler said she, for one, is willing
to invite the higher-density housing that smart growth advocates,
especially in such neighborhoods as the Mercado redevelopment
district in Escondido.

La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid said he is ready for change, too, and
his city already is encouraging high-density development along a
commuter rail line.

"It's about protecting what we have," Madrid said of the need
for smarter growth. "They're not making any more land. Unless a
volcano erupts, once the land is gone, it's gone."

San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Horn, a
North County avocado rancher, said change is needed not only to
preserve rural territory, but to hold the line on soaring costs for
new highways and other facilities for the people who are
coming.

"It's just going to cost too much to build all the way to
Palomar Mountain," Horn said at a recent SANDAG workshop. "And
putting up ranchettes all over the place is not going to absorb a
million people."

But that's what is on the books today.

House with big yard is king

Cities' plans for future growth call for continued dominance of
the single-family home with a big back yard. Meanwhile, the county
government's plan for unincorporated areas permits a checkerboard
pattern of ranchettes -- homes built on 2, 4 and 8 acres --
throughout the backcountry.

Under the plans, so much asphalt, concrete and stucco could fill
rural areas that residents might one day feel like they never leave
the city when they drive from one side of San Diego County to the
other, said Eric Bowlby, the San Diego spokesman for the Sierra
Club.

"We're set up for the sprawl scenario," Bowlby said. "To me, it
doesn't matter whether it happens in 20 years or 50 years or 100
years. It is still a massively irresponsible thing to allow to
happen."

But continuous desert-to-the-sea development doesn't have to
happen, SANDAG planners say.

By employing basic smart-growth principles, planners say, namely
changing zoning laws to encourage construction of more townhomes
and condominiums in existing urban areas and to discourage
development in rural areas, the region can accommodate the
estimated 900,000 people and still have wide open spaces and a
thriving agriculture industry.

Smart growth would chew up 200,000 acres during the next 20
years, much less than the more than 600,000 acres that would be
lost if current development patterns persist, SANDAG spokesman
Garry Bonelli said.

The spared 400,000 acres is the equivalent of 15 Oceansides or
18 Escondidos.

Backcountry is battlefield

SANDAG also has outlined a pair of less aggressive smart-growth
strategies as alternatives, which would result in consuming half
and one-third of empty land, respectively, according to an agency
report.

SANDAG is preparing to host a regional growth summit in
September, then ask the 18 area cities and county to formally
endorse smart growth and change their zoning laws, Bonelli
said.

County planners already are working on changes through the
General Plan 2020 update, but they are encountering stiff
resistance from landowners to a controversial component of the
smart-growth strategy: "down-zoning" land in the backcountry, or
reducing the number of houses that can be built there.

Landowner groups say down-zoning is unfair because it lowers
property values, and farmers say it cripples their ability to
borrow money for agricultural innovations.

There is another problem as well, said Eric Larson, the
executive director for the Escondido-based San Diego County Farm
Bureau.

More than 60 percent of county farms sit on 10 acres or less. So
limiting new houses to one for each 40 acres in the backcountry --
as environmental groups are advocating -- could unintentionally
cause a decline in the county's fourth largest industry, Larson
said.

"Whose 400,000 acres are these? We're concerned about that,"
added Ernie Cowan, the governmental affairs director for the North
San Diego County Association of Realtors. He said area officials
need to compensate landowners for any loss of value associated with
down-zoning, or buy the land.

Cowan also questioned the need for capping development in the
backcountry.

"Fifty percent of San Diego County is already permanent open
space," Cowan said. "The question is, how much more do we
need?"